Forgotten (16 page)

“
Relax, Mrs. T, we’re just
going to the arcade with a few friends tomorrow,” Bree yelled back
and shut the door.

“
Breakfast on Monday? Was I
going to get a memo?” I asked.

“
You’re being stubborn. If
you’re sight is really bothering you, go see your doc. You do
almost everything without your fosters’ permission, so why not
schedule the medical appointments? Breakfast will be my reason for
picking you up early and your cover for the
appointment.”

Bree excelled at scheming. I had to
hand it to her – it was a good plan. “What was the whole going out
with some friends tomorrow night bit?”

“
I’m pulling out the
FB-card,” Bree said a matter-o-fact. “You owe me a night out with
Ryker. Mom found out about the double-o-seven date and has been
extra lame giving me excuses not to get out of the house at night.
Plus you’re keeping secrets and don’t try to deny it. I’m not an
idiot. You’ll tell me when you’re good and ready, but if you want
me to play taxi driver and nurse without giving me a good reason
why, I’m going to cash in my ‘friend benefits card’ so I can see my
boyfriend after dark.”

I sighed. I couldn’t disagree with
that logic either.

“
My ma said, and I quote,
‘You will not go out with that Ryker boy alone.’ She just saw a
commercial for TeenPregs and now is positive I’m going to give her
a grandbaby by the time we graduate from this dumpy little
town.”

***

I woke in a wheat field at day break.
My head throbbed. At least my stomach wasn’t retching. The hard
soil did a number on my knees. My hands smashed into the dried
grass around me. No flower petals this time. My hair tickled my
nose as the wind pushed it around. Cottonwood seeds floated in the
air around me, almost invisible in the light.

I called out for him – for
Jace – and immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to dream of him.
Okay,
maybe
that
wasn’t exactly the truth, but he still scared me. His protective
tendencies should have sent me running for the hills, but for some
reason my feet refused to move. I felt him kneel behind me before I
heard him.

Jace was a hazard to my health. It was
one thing that I had a slight fixation about dreaming of him, but
it was another when I couldn’t stop thinking about his voice while
in class. And finally, he proved that he wasn’t actually planning
on leaving me alone. I needed distance. I needed time to strategize
– find a way to cease his obsession with me. He was arrogant, vain,
and overprotective. Even if he was a saint, it wasn’t healthy to
waste so much time thinking about one guy.

Jace began rubbing my back with his
smooth hands. A rush of regret washed over my soul but it wasn’t an
emotion that had come within me; it was as if I sensed Jace’s
feelings as well as my own. The tension in my back weakened; my
resistance crumbled.

“
You said to meet me in
your dreams,” Jace whispered.

“
In
your
dreams, is what I actually said.
Not mine.”

“
Technicalities.”

He gently moved my hair away from my
neck. He muttered something right before his smooth lips caressed
my skin. My hesitation vanished. I leaned against him and began to
enjoy myself once more. When the thought surfaced again, he flicked
his tongue over my skin. I squirmed, which only encouraged
him.

“
Let go of reality,
dearest.”

Reality, I reminded myself. This
wasn’t it. I needed to wake up for sanity’s sake. This wasn’t real.
Soon, I wouldn’t know what my subconscious was creating. My real
life was becoming more difficult to know what was impossible and
fake. My visions drug me to the limits of my sanity. Falling for a
heart-throb in my dreams, while in reality he was dangerous, both
emotionally and physically, was where I could draw the line. I
needed to wake up!

I elbowed him in the gut out of sheer
desperation. He didn’t flinch. I spun around and connected a right
hook. He didn’t fight back, so I aimed lower. He blocked me.
Grabbing my wrist, he suppressed a chuckle. I tried not to cry out
when he twisted my wrist to the point of breaking. Instead of
“saying uncle” like I should have, my elbow got familiar with his
eye.

“
That was unnecessary,” he
grunted.

Using my free hand, I pounded his
stomach, hoping to knock the wind out of him. No shirt – picture my
surprise. His hazy outline focused. The muscles hiding in the haze
became defined. I could see that he simply wore jeans and nothing
else. An image flickered in my mind of water of dripping down his
hair and onto his hard chest. I bit my lip remembering how it felt
to be held as water splashed on us in my last dream.

“
Indulge in more thoughts
like that,” he said, as if he could see the fantasies play out in
my mind.

I couldn’t get the image of the beads
of water drizzling down his chest out of my head even when I
attacked him. He fought with skill and was fast enough to block all
of my charges.

“
What are you, some kind of
gladiator?” I asked.

“
Not anymore.”

I stopped fighting. What was that
supposed to mean?

He slowly released his grip like he
didn’t trust me not to hit below the belt. Smart guy! He didn’t
move away, so I stood up and walked away. My body begged me not to.
I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in another dream like
this, but I couldn’t. As precarious as Jace was, losing a grip on
what was real. It didn’t seem like a good idea. My reality was
making less sense, so losing myself in my dreams was dangerous on
another level entirely.

A half a second later, Jace was
walking through the wheat field beside me. My skin burned as he
reached for my hand. I turned directions. He changed course and
followed me.

“
Running again, my dearest?
You left me several lifetimes ago, and I’m still chasing you.
There’s no point in making this difficult when it doesn’t have to
be.”

I stopped and turned to him. Small
colorless flames rippled from his skin. My skin prickled as they
grew more intense. My mouth dried. Smoke floated around us. If
charisma, raw hunger, and undying lust could be wrapped up into one
hot package, it’d be called ‘Jace.’ A part of me didn’t care if I
got burned – which was exactly why I didn’t let myself indulge in
the temptation he was offering.

He was in front of me before I could
blink. His hot hands were on my shoulders, holding me still. Even
in my sleep I couldn’t evade him – and I didn’t want to. I had an
internal battle with wanting Jace to steal me from my pathetic life
and to run away from him. The closer he was, the more often he
touched me, the more my mouth watered for him to kiss me. He was
like a drug – addictive. And like drugs, he had to have dangerous
repercussions. I refused to become an Addict.

The smoke grew, threatening to block
out the beginning of dawn. Flames leaped from his skin to mine.
Just as quickly as his touch burned me, I wanted more. It hurt, but
just as painful as it was to get burned from the fire creeping over
our skin; it left no evidence of damaged skin. Either his fire
wasn’t hazardous, which I doubted, or he healed me faster than his
flames hurt me.

I hadn’t understood how it
was possible. But then again, most dreams never made sense.
A dream. This wasn’t reality.
I needed to remember that. Instead of embracing him, I slammed
my fist into his gut. He never released his grip on my shoulders.
His fire engulfed us. Smoke blocked out everything but his face,
which started to define around the edges. Even with the intense
heat, I couldn’t look away. Tears gathered and trickled down my
cheeks. Within their dark color, a flicker grew. His eyes trapped a
single colorless flame. It was impossible and beautiful. The more
ridged his body became as he pressed himself against me, the hotter
I burned for him.

“
The chase,” he said as his
hand slid up my back and behind my head. “The chase has tormented
me for the better part of my existence, but it doesn’t hold a flame
to what you are doing now.”

“
What am I doing now?” I
asked, squirming in his grip even though I didn’t want to be
anywhere else. I hungered for his touch just as I refused to admit
the sinful appetite he brought out in me.

“
Fighting – I always
wanted, prayed even, for you to find a little bit of fight in you,
and now that you do it makes my blood boil.” His voice rose the
longer he spoke. His anger was evident. “Not because it doesn’t
please me to see defiance grow in you, but because you insist
on
fighting me
!
For heaven’s sake, stop fighting me.
I’m
not your enemy!”

His words bred frustration when
combined with his body language. He slid his trembling hand down my
side and then around my back. He abruptly pulled me up against him
just as he gently slid his other hand under my jaw. He leaned into
me like he was going to give me another taste of his
kiss.

“
Every past experience
could’ve been prevented if you had any fight, any fight at all! But
no, you preferred to be passive, which nearly cost…”

He stepped away from me like he
suddenly couldn’t stand to be anywhere near me. Seeing him engulfed
in his horrific, beautiful fire, did me in. The morning sun
couldn’t warm my skin the way Jace could. Now I never felt colder
or more alone…

“
Jace, stop!”

He didn’t. I needed to say something,
anything to keep him from leaving. I hadn’t known why he was so
angry. How could he be so adamant about us being together, yet walk
away?

“
Don’t leave me!” I
yelled.

“
I screamed that very line
to the heavens years ago.”

***

My sight and hearing had returned to
normal by the time I woke up in my back yard. The morning sun
greeted me. Dew had collected on the grass around me as well as
coated my pajamas. My body was cold, and my mind was groggy. I
stayed outside, trying to make sense of what my unconscious was
screaming at me. Apparently, I was dense, because I just wasn’t
getting it.

Elsie reached for my hand when I
walked in the back door. She acted like waking up outside was
completely normal. It seemed that she wasn’t going to give up her
duty of guiding me around the house, like I needed to last night
when Bree brought me home. I was feeling much better, but that
wasn’t important when her tiny hand held onto mine like I was her
lifeline. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I could rattle
off how many steps it was from the garage door to the fridge, how
many paces it took to get from my dining table seat to the bathroom
and then to the couch. I knew exactly how many steps it took for me
to walk from the front door to my bedroom. I knew that the
seventeenth step on the stairs groaned when someone walked across
it. I had the entire house mapped out, but that wasn’t as important
as making her feel like she had a purpose.

That night, Bree cashed in her
friendship benefits card when she came over to pick out my clothes
– big mistake. She let me veto the heels only because I’d be a
walking disaster in them. Opting for ballerina flats, I slipped on
a pair of her pants that she swore up and down weren’t from the
bottom of my dresser drawer, but the musty smell indicated
otherwise.

“You look great,” she said, after I
got a little long-winded about not being twelve and how I shouldn’t
dress in pants I wore back then. “Besides, you never wear anything
that shows off all those long hours at the gym.”

I sucked in and buttoned the top of
the jeans. After that, she handed me a pile of shirts. It was only
after I slipped on three different shirts of different lengths and
shades of gray did I start to suspect that she’d been plotting
again. “Why do I feel like I’m going on a date or something equally
horrible?”

“Just hanging out with Ryker and
friends,” she promised, grabbing a brush.

After pulling out my ponytail that
took me all of forty-five seconds to whip up, she took a flat iron
to my hair. By the time she was done, I could touch the tips of my
hair if I strained my shoulder by reaching around my back. She
still sprayed me down with a canister of hairspray. I gagged. I
couldn’t get the window cracked open fast enough. A car pulled into
the driveway.

“
Perfect timing!” Bree said
and reached for my hand.

HomFree’s alarms wouldn’t sound since
the window was open; but then again, it was on the second floor of
the house. If someone wanted to break in, it wasn’t going to be an
easy climb. Sure there was a tree right outside my window, but its
branches were old and wouldn’t support a lot of weight.

Leading me to the passenger side, Bree
opened the door and tilted the seat forward. I crawled in the back
seat.

“You don’t look completely hideous,”
Ryker said.

“Wish I could say the same thing about
you,” I muttered and pulled the seat back so Bree could sit when I
noticed the driver side door opening and a person was entering the
vehicle from his side.

A wave of nausea hadn’t hit me, but I
knew who it was from the scent. Jace. He pushed the seat forward
and sat down next to me. I pushed the back of the seat to get out;
Bree blocked me.